


After 1959

by narsus



Category: BioShock, Cabin Pressure
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-01
Updated: 2011-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-23 08:23:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://cabinpres-fic.livejournal.com/728.html?thread=821464#t821464">this</a> prompt:<br/><i>MJN crash land in the Atlantic, swimming to safety to a strange building in the middle of the ocean. They open the door, intending to shelter themselves from the extreme weather, instead being dragged into the city of Rapture.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Return

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Cabin Pressure belongs to John Finnemore and BBC Radio 4. Bioshock belongs to 2K Games and others.

The _creature_ that lumbered towards them could best be described as a deep sea diving suit that had taken up drilling as a hobby, and for once, even Arthur was quieted by its approach.

“Oh, for-“ Carolyn, on the other hand, seemed more annoyed than afraid. “Douglas!”  
“Right you are.”

Later, Martin would tell himself that he’d been frozen in fear rather than busy trying to throw Arthur off so that he could dive between the menacing thing that Douglas was squaring off against. Luckily, the thing came to a stop, about a foot from where Douglas was making a last stand. It let out a strange bellow, not unlike whale song, the light from its helmet flickered and then it simply lumbered off in the other direction. The last thing Martin heard before he fainted was Carolyn’s inexplicable comment of: “You never lose the knack for it.”

When Martin woke, the first thing he noticed was that the oppressive silence was gone, the slick sound of flowing water, leaking _inside_ something had been replaced by the sound of seagulls and the comforting lapping of the waves. He was lying in an inflatable life raft, Arthur sitting by his side, Carolyn and Douglas both with their backs to him, staring out across the sea.

“Do you... ever miss it?” Douglas sounded strangely sad.  
“Never. ” Carolyn was as decisive as ever.  
“Good. That’s good then.”  
“Douglas, I-“  
“I’m glad.” Douglas continued, as if he hadn’t heard her.

It wasn’t a conversation that made any sense but then nothing had, not since the instruments had malfunctioned in the middle of the Atlantic. Not since the abandoned lighthouse or the cracked tile floors or anything else that Martin could remember.

Nobody mentioned it again so Martin thought it best to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t know what Carolyn and Douglas had been talking about in the raft, he didn’t know what they’d meant back in that underwater city either. Perhaps he might have even dreamt it all. He’d almost convinced himself that that was the only explanation, until one day, at the edge of a pier that stretched out towards the vast Atlantic, he’d heard Douglas sigh wearily.

“Douglas?”

Douglas had smiled at him, sadly.

“Sometimes, I miss the sea.”


	2. Departure

He dreams of Rapture for weeks afterwards. Dreams of the booming voices of his brothers, the song that he can understand but cannot emulate. He was one of the first after all. One of the ones who never earned their armour, who were never meant to wear it. He is small in comparison, dwarfed by the rest of them. He is too short, too thin, his hands are tiny in comparison. He can of course use plasmids like the rest of the population but he doesn’t have the strength to lift a drill. He wasn’t even really of use then, but still, they’d kept him. His brothers singing to each other laughingly as he clambered up to polish their glass-windowed helmets.

They gave him a name instead of a designation. They called him ‘Douglas’ when really, technically, he was ‘Delta R’. He’d kept the ‘R’ when he’d come to the surface, kept the name, a silly, human name, too. It had been the only thing he had left to remember them by, the only thing after he’d parted from that objectionable, objectivist Little Sister. She wasn’t _his_ Little Sister of course. He’d never been given one, but she’d belonged to one of his favourite brothers, a brother who had died to help her escape. The brother that in her own way she’d probably named her own son for.

He isn’t ‘Delta R’ anymore. These days he’s Douglas Richardson. He has nothing to protect and has spent more years that his apparent age trying to get as far away from the sea as possible. It’s why he became a pilot. Carolyn has presumably done the same thing. And yet, every time they fly over the sea he looks down, he scans the horizon for a lighthouse, watches the rolling waves for evidence of _something_.

 

They make a return trip across the Atlantic six months later and just as always he prepares to look down, at the rolling waves. But this time something stops him. Martin’s hand on his arm is long-fingered and pale. Douglas remembers the exact sum that could be paid to have hands like that. He meets Martin’s concerned gaze briefly before turning his eyes upon the horizon again.

That night his dreams are a memory instead, of a pretty splicer with flame-coloured hair and a penchant for sarcasm.


End file.
